I assume Zuckerburg had the Facebook satellite that exploded insured.
How much did he probably have to spend to get a policy from Lloyd’s of London (or whatever insurance company)?
I suspect that Lloyds (along with every other insurer) would be reluctant to offer insurance without some reasonable idea of the chance of a loss. And I doubt there’s anything like enough information on Space X launch reliability to accurately estimate that.
Which implies either that there was no insurance, or the cost was really high (probably enough to make self-insuring attractive).
No, commercial satellites are routinely insured against loss. I just don’t know how much the policy costs.
While there is insurance available, it may not have covered this situation. The satellite is usually insured separately for transportation to the launch area. Then a different policy would cover from launch to operational condition in orbit. This incident was after delivery and during a full-up test; not a launch. It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out. Lawyers for sure.
To late to edit. Apparently pre-launch insurance covers from manufacturing transport, through testing, up to actual launch ignition.
Hmmmm. I wonder what the deductible might be?
The Amos-6 satellite was owned by Spacecom, an Israeli communications satellite operator. It’s only a “Facebook satellite” in that Facebook was one of 7 partners in the internet.org venture, which had an agreement to lease bandwidth on the satellite.
A member of my family actually works in satellite insurance. Next time I see her I’ll ask how much it would have cost.
When a Commercial Rocket Blows Up, Who Pays?
Article on satellite insurance, with specifics on this one.